Review: Trivial Pursuit Live 2

First of all, I love Trivial Pursuit. In real life as well. I love the questions and pitting my knowledge against those of other players. It’s much more skill-based than the luck factor of Monopoly and it’s dirty strategies (yes, I hate monopoly). Is it a slog or is it fun and why do I have a craving for pie all of a sudden?

Quiz style games are always fun to play if they are done right. Fun to play with friends and thanks to the internet, you can challenge players from all over the world against your knowledge of obscure facts. Trivial Pursuit is the kind of game that everybody with a bit of knowledge can pick up and be good at, even if they have categories that they are not good at, there is a chance that by just guessing, you can still get it right, and that is where Trivial Pursuit Live 2 shines, in my opinion.

While playing I never go the feeling that there was an unfair advantage or that the other person online had time to google the answer, which in other games could happen, but here the balance is set right between time enough so you can answer correctly (so you don’t have to have rapid reflexes to win a game), but also have faster games, so that you don’t have time to cheat in any way.

One of the features I also liked in the game is the statistics of which categories you are good at and where you lack in knowledge, which is not that special, but it’s fun to see and so you know where your strengths are when you have to choose an online category. It comes to no surprise, for me at least, that I am better in pop culture questions than questions about history or geography. I have general knowledge but have to guess more times than in the pop culture category.

This game is easy to pick up but hard to put down. The “one more game” phenomenon creeps in after playing your first game and many more after that, which is fun and you get rewarded for it as well, and not only in knowing more obscure facts to parrot in your next conversation. There are unlockables for the character that represents you while you play. There are plenty male and female options (sadly no disabled or more genderfluid, but you can choose a new character each round, so your choice isn’t set in stone), and each character has plenty of customizable options.

Fun thing: as of this moment, there are no micro-transactions, which in the market of today, feels like a breath of fresh air.

If you love playing party games and playing games with followers on Twitch, Trivial Pursuit Live 2 has the option to play on Twitch, which I thought was a nice addition in a party game title that suits itself to the format, so it’s nice that they added this feature.

Games like these are best enjoyed with friends, so you can trash talk in chat or just nudge each other while you are playing on the couch next to eachother and it’s fun to see that both options are supported here. You can play online, but you can also play just offline with a bunch of people, which gives a more fun and quicker alternative to the boardgame of the same name, as this plays the same and yet different.

To give you how this game feels, if you haven’t played before, it’s like a quiz-show and even presents itself that way. Each question gives you points and there are rounds where you can earn bonus points or different ways of answering questions, which mixes up the formula just enough so it stays interesting and you never feel like you are going to lose because a person lucked out on their category and can keep answering questions due to lucky roles and lucky card pulls (yes, 10-15 string question turns do happen regularly in games I play offline, and not only by me).

If you like party games and are looking to put one more in your collection, then this might be a good fit. You won’t regret it as it’s a polished fun little experience to pull out with friends or to enjoy online.